When I moved into my first home in 2005 I only judged it by a few things:  its price, its location, and its community.  America is somewhat unique with its concept of homeowner associations, commonly called HOAs.  When I explained the concept to my wife, who is from Belgium, she didn’t understand why it was necessary.  It seemed to her like an unnecessary cost.   HOAs can charge dues which can range from affordable to appalling.  My neighborhood dues for 2009 are currently $207 paid annually, which is exceptionally low for anywhere in the state of Florida.  While living here and working with the community as a HOA board member, I could see things from a new perspective.  Just knowing the number of homes in my community formed the first point.

Let’s briefly explore what defines a community.  What are the boundaries?  Boundaries can be economic, geographic, political, or a number of other possibilities.  Associations are usually formed by home builders who purchased land in large plots and then divided it into smaller plots for homes.  These homes are usually surrounded by  individual fences and/or a wall is built at the perimeter of the community, thus forming the geographic bounds.  The legal bounds are unclear to the passerby so visual cues provide the first impression.  My community has 144 single-family homes.  That by itself is no revelation but it has a new context when considering Dunbar’s number. Research by the anthropologist Robin Dunbar has suggested that people form social circles which typically reach a maximum, stable limit of 148 people.  That’s the cognitive limit whereby a person can recall all the interpersonal politics.  That was the second point and I made the connection.

Perhaps my community was built with this in mind or perhaps it was constrained by geographic limits.  There’s a body of water to the east, a school to the north, and two roads bounding the other directions.  Maybe taxation or zoning restrictions dictated the limits.  The reasons are moot.  The number of homes is conveniently close to the Dunbar number.  However, the developers did not plan for 144 islands within the community.

While serving as a board member for my HOA I observed a striking lack of community solidarity.  The HOA collects dues to maintain one community but residents mostly act as islands unto themselves.  One criminal incident raised concern for the community’s safety.  Calls were made to form a community watch, whereby residents would patrol and report crime to “block captains” and so on.  It would all be coordinated with the local sheriff’s office.  The board raised funding to begin the watch, while a call was made to gather volunteers.  No one showed.

Another theory was cited in The Economist’s article which referred to a social “core”.  This group of individuals socializes the most among each other.  If the homeowner’s association (a not-for-profit business entity) can be considered a person, then its core group consists of the board of directors, and everyone else could fall within the Dunbar number.  Not a single person interacts with all others in my community; the one exception is the HOA.  Some board members who served for the HOA still live here and I asked them how community interaction has changed.  Surprisingly little has changed.  Board members from five and even 10 years ago reported problems with community cohesion.  They also observed that the core of support for the HOA usually revolves around three to five motivated people.  These anthropological theories hold up surprisingly well even when the organism is not a single person but a homeowner association created to manage 144 homes.

Let me briefly go back to the island metaphor.  The long term lack of cohesion seems to imply that a homeowner’s organization creates only an ad-hoc community whereby individual homes are grouped and assessed dues, but which lacks the bonds that might be stronger in self-forming communities.  Indeed, the only way to transcend such a heterogeneous group is to create an artificial construct: the HOA.

The HOA concept seems dated and its slow death inevitable.  Society is not organized around the community as it was in the previous millennium, when nomadic tribes wandered together.  People are much more independent, mobile, and free to settle into a home of their choice.  Like a collection of Facebook friends, my HOA keeps 144 in its circle, and those 144 people are not obliged to know or even care about each other.  They might even be neighbors.